This story appears in the November 2009 issue of National Geographic magazine. The lizard moved in frightened rhythms across the sun-blasted stone. A few quick steps, a turn of its boxy head. Then ...

But penitentes and stone forests are actually quite different in terms of the mechanisms involved in their formation. "I think the similarities are pretty superficial," said Ristroph.

There's a crazy landform in Madagascar called a tsingy, which, euphemistically translated from Malagasy, means "where one cannot walk barefoot." It's basically a treacherous forest of limestone ...

KIRINDY FOREST, Madagascar (Reuters) - As a shocked world watches fires ravage the Amazon, slash-and-burn farmers are wreaking proportionally worse destruction half a world away in Madagascar ...

Between 1996 and 2006, Tsaratanana lost only about 0.1 % of its forest cover to deforestation per year; things got worse from 2006 to 2016, when the level of deforestation increased to about 0.5 % ...